Cattle Trials

This morning, I put my entries for the USBCHA cattle trial in April in our out-going mail bin at work; then after thinking about it for a few hours, went to retrieve the envelope and tore it up. I said earlier that I was going to trial Gel in USBCHA cattle trials and I'm going to stick to that. I will continue to trial him on cattle in ASCA arena trials until he finished his WTCH, but I'm not going to put him in an open field trial with cattle for the sake of glory.

I don't work Gel on cattle on a frequent basis so we do not have the means to figure out the beasts. Cattle can kill or seriously injure a dog. In an arena trial, I am there to help Gel if necessary. Believe me, when that one calf at the trial in Georgia was running up over the top of Gel, I was right there with him to help back the crazy critter off. I called the run when it was apparent that calf was not going to quit no matter how many times Gel bit him. That's much harder to do when the dog is 200 or 300 yards away and a cow or cattle are running up over him. Tough dog or not, cattle are much bigger than a dog and if they want to injure the dog, they are going to.

There are people in this World who use dogs to move cattle on a daily basis. Their dogs are a necessity to these people. Trialing on cattle is not a necessity for me. I don't need to prove to anyone that my dog is tough or skilled enough to work cattle. Gel is much to precious to risk.